15 September 2011
6:15pm
Department of Mysteries

"I'd kindly advise you stay out of it, Som." So had said Solomon Carstairs, Head of Level Two. Quill, the Head of Level Three, had exited then without another word and took the lift straight across to see Yavin Morgenthau, Head of Level Nine. Paradoxically, she expected more answers from Mysteries.

The Department of Mysteries was deliberately dramatic. The elevator opened to a long corridor of glossy black stone, ominously free of your own reflection. Quill Som did not like being reminded of the wars. And she did not like being haunted by the ghost of Lawrence Musgrave.[1]And yet, when such things did occur, she was compelled to follow the twine through the labyrinth.

Her boots clicked on the stones, and she adjusted her hair as she came down the hall to the room of doors. She declared her intentions to the silent portals.

"I need to see Yavin Morgenthou."

1.

Lawrence and Quill became friends in 1981 after a field operation. During the Second War, when the Ministry fell to the Death Eaters, Lawrence betrayed her and threatened her family. The war raged on, Lawrence was brought to justice, and Quill heard nothing until this year when he was brought onto Level Two. Quill's association with Lawrence is not well known.

            "Give me a month," said Virgil. "I can break it in a month."

It was after work hours on the Department of Mysteries but Time could act up like a fickle thing here. Yavin Morgenthau's office was a large room that stood in contrast to the rest of level nine, with its white marbled floors and rattan furniture. Towering bookshelves dominated one wall and, across from it, a pristine sink next to a laboratory work table peopled by parchment and crystal jars containing brains. A scalpel gleamed in the golden light, which emanated from nowhere in particular.

Three of four skeletons were sat on several stools here and there, in various poses of relaxation. They wore hats or cravats or featured smoking pipes between their grinning teeth.

The entrance was a set of black double doors, on the opposite far end from Yavin's desk. This was where the man himself sat now - a lithe figure with fingers steepled over the african blackwood. Behind him, three separate Victorian windows overlooked surreal sights: a lighthouse on the very edge of a dark cliff thrust into evening fog, the vista of a stark rust coloured desert, a narrow alleyway lit under starlight.

"Two months." Yavin replied, guessing how long it would take for Virgil to crack the Legilimency puzzle in his head. "I've, aha, I've booby-trapped the damn th--"

A bell rang, clear as glass and with no visible origin. They exchanged a look. He reached for his wand and gave it a twist, Virgil already rising.

Elsewhere on level nine, in the foyer, an additional door appeared in the wall for Quill Som to use. The Unspeakable-in-Training reached for its handle from the other side and opened it, expression dour.

            "Right this way." Virgil greeted a little sardonically. Behind him in the white room, Yavin smiled.

"Quill!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Do, aha, come in. Carstairs was just about to leave."

It wasn't long before one of Yavin's seraphim appeared to allow her in, a pale golden youth with sunken eyes and a crispy way about him. He'd either arrived recently at Level Nine already with this aire, or Level Nine had nurtured it in him sufficiently.

She went past him into the room, sparing him - another Carstairs apparently - only a sideways glance.

Quill had met Yavin Morgenthau on a few occasions, administrative and in coordination of I.D.R.E.A.D. She didn't dislike him, and really found no need to have anything other than a professional estimation. She never trusted the Department of Mysteries, or as she thought of them, the Department of Redacted; they ostensibly kept records - there were records - but they were always blacked out in monolith.

This was her first time in his ... office? It was more like some kind of laboratory or exhibit of the macabre. Her eyes lingered for a moment on the ensemble of skeletons, sitting on stools like some kind of grinning acapella group. Quill turned back to Morgenthau and approached him with a clipping from a magazine.

... No, dear readers. In late August, Lawrence Musgrave was secretly taken to St Mungo’s Hospital to be treated and looked after by our Head Healer herself...

"This is from Witch Weekly," she said handing him the article. She paused, not sure how to express her concern in a way that wouldn't let on her uncomfortable relationship with the subject.

"Is it true? Because I thought you had him."

The unspoken questions: What were they doing with him at St. Mungo's? Why was he being passed around like collateral? Why hadn't he yet stood trial? And, most importantly, why was it all happening under a veil?

His pupil disappeared with a lethargic little wave, leaving Yavin only with the sensation of someone tentatively prodding at the exterior of his mind - an easily ignored feeling when you knew the perpetrator in question. He rose from his desk and walked around it to meet with the head of level three.

Quill Som. What did he know about her?. Serious. Possibly lacking a funny bone. Efficient.

The clipping was gingerly taken, as if though he'd been offered a filthy glove. Ah, it was from the editorial by Queen G. Neither royalty nor street enough for that sobriquet. He scanned it briefly. Som's mind buzzed with questions, he could almost feel them.

"I am, aha, I am responsible for him under the care of St.Mungo's." Yavin handed her back the article and gestured at the chair that Virgil had vacated. "Please." He took the other chair, rather than the one behind his desk.

Why was she asking about Musgrave? Not enough people asked why, even on level nine, where the emphasis was on how. The man definitely seemed to get around with the witches, for someone who didn't have the autonomy to leave his own room now.

"You have an investment in Lawrence?" he smiled dryly at his visitor, looking a little too much like one of his skeletons. "Or is this, hm, this concern out of the goodness of your samaritan heart?"

Quill took her seat and crossed one leg over the other. (Sorry, where the chairs wicker? Mysteries was a house of bricks, they sat on chairs of sticks, and what would, at last, be straw, then, blown down in a puff?) She looked at Morgenthau for a moment, having much to think about before she responded. In this quiet room, whose whiteness positively hummed, the contrast between him and his predecessor Mortimer Gamp was stark, at least on the surface.  Hopefully a few more feet down as well.

'Lawrence', was he now?

What was that look on his face? Was he - ! Ugh! Quill's lip curled in defiant contempt. She highly doubted that he would have that smug smile for any of her wizard peers who confronted him about the situation of  a bloody Death Eater.

"In 1997, Musgrave betrayed my family to the Death Eaters. I did what I had to do at great cost to protect them. My investment is in an unimpeachable application of the law. Closure."

She pursed her lips. "My asking you is unofficial," she admitted. "And there's nothing Greater Good about it."

Sure. Yes. They would all be judged on how the sorry Musgrave's of the world were treated, and no citizen should ever expect better than what society meted out to its Least.  But, in Quill's heart, all she'd wanted was to never see or think of Lawrence Musgrave again. And she feared she wouldn't be free of the ghost until he was exactly where she expected him to be.

"And what about you? What's your investment?" she asked calmly.

Exposition! Yavin's gaze lit up as she drew out the thread that connected her to his unfortunate patient in St.Mungo's. So not an amorous history but nonetheless, similar to Miranda, one that merited vengeance. Quill Som was here to ensure that Lawrence did not escape the long hand of the law. Justice demanded its enactment.

             "And what about you? What's your investment?"

He gestured at the room around them, its high ceilings and stark appearance complimenting his own. "The pursuit of the unknown, madam. You might consider me, aha, an objective participant."

If it were possible to be those two things at the same time. The old wizard knew to keep an emotional distance from what was happening in St.Mungo's but he was ultimately human, wasn't he? Biases would eventually develop.

"Lawrence is being studied and treated for what has, hm, what has become of his mind." Yavin crossed his long legs and leaned back in the chair, blinking slowly. "He will still stand trial, I am, ah, informed. And when we are done he will serve his, that is, his time."

Quill didn't like the look on the American's face. What had he got to smile about? In this room, under his amusement, she felt that she too was under some sort of observation. No, Quill Som didn't care for it at all. It seemed .. all very inappropriate.

She narrowed her eyes. "His mind? What are you talking about?"

Treated? Sure. Quill Som was sympathetic to those suffering from all that had happened, and even the treacherous deserved care. It was important that the law be followed and only those proved fit should be subjected to trial. But, studied? Studied under the wand of the Department of Mysteries?

"St. Mungo's and the Department of Mysteries working together, has to be Dementors." 

It was a guess, but not a reach for a witch with the background of Quill Som. She'd been in this game a very long time, and having observed Mysteries in their interactions with IDREAD... well.

She asked and, without prompting, answered her own query. For those familiar with the inner workings of the Ministry of Magic and its relationship with the hospital, maybe this conclusion was inevitable. Especially for someone whose profession necessitated frequent contact with the grim creatures. It brought his mind to the one they were keeping in their Labyrinth.

            "St. Mungo's and the Department of Mysteries working together, has to be Dementors." 

"Ding ding ding!" Yavin held up a finger and -

"Ding ding ding!"
            "Ding ding ding!"
                        "Ding ding ding!"

- three of the skeletons in the room jabbered their jaws in a trio of dreadful echoes, and turned their grinning faces in the direction of his desk. He laughed a deep laugh, eyes glimmering over the dark rim of his spectacles as he observed Quill.

"An educated guess?" Yavin tilted his head back slightly. "Lawrence has, hm, has a unique brain affected by our amortal friends," his mouth relaxed into a thoughtful smile and he shrugged. "From darkness there, aha, is light to be derived. Something to help both him and others, hm, others like him."

Quill Som startled, just barely, as the clattering trio of skeletons were suddenly cacophonous. She looked back at Yavin with growing distaste on her face.

"Well, you're rather blithe about it," she said, beginning to show her personal disagreement with his demeanor. Gallows humor she understood, cold detachment made sense, but not this. She crossed her arms and kept her seat. Morgenthau seemed more verbose than Carstairs, if not more purple about it, so maybe there's more he'd tell.

"So, what's so unique about him? Is he immune to the Dementors influence? And you say there are others like him?"

Quill had been chasing after the blights for a long time, and it was all relentlessly the same. Predictable if it weren't always chaotic, for the muggle element. There were close calls, there were those with exceptional Patroni who fared better, but from everything Quill had seen, the soul siphoning spectres were indiscriminate.

The skeletons snapped back to their original positions - but perhaps they sat or stood a little closer now, always a little closer every time you looked at them. Yavin rose from behind his desk as Quill responded. He turned his back to her to casually observe the views from one of his three windows: the lone lighthouse on the cliff, its lantern casting rays out towards sea.

            "And you say there are others like him?"

"People like you." Yavin murmured, slipping his hands into his pocket and glancing over his shoulder for just a moment. "Lawrence, hm, Lawrence shouldn't exist should he?" his attention returned to the window. "His extreme exposure to dementors should have, ah, have driven him to madness or worse."

To the very brink of life, the point of no return. The kiss. His eyes narrowed at the view before him. Yavin thought about what kind of person lived in a lighthouse. The kind of person who had nothing else.

"Helping him might, aha, might help to heal others with.... lesser exposures," he explained before finally returning to the desk, smiling at Quill. This time he perched on its side and nearly displaced a copper sphere that was floating next to the ink pots. "Miranda Storm's neat little, hah, little idea."

Quill nodded and was then silent in thought, her mind working methodically to weave the ends together, find where stitches might have been dropped and draw them up again.

She had immense respect for Edwin Glass, but under his new leadership the tone of Zephyr's interdepartmental philosophy had been altered. It was over a year ago that Zephyr had announced the initiatives in direct policy and financial support of St. Mungos' role in solving the Dementor problem.[1].  Nothing had been dismantled, but the emphasis seemed to have changed. No one would say that Zephyr was truly transparent, and no one would say that Glass was secretive, but from the inside looking up, the view was now veiled.

Quill was wary, but from what she was being shown, this Musgrave business fit. Mostly. The Ministry and Mungo's were cooperating and sharing information. Mungo's was studying patients and sharing research. The Ministry was supervising. On the surface, it fit.

She stood up to go and smoothed her robes. "That's fine." She almost shrugged, as if Morgenthau's disconcerting theatrics had been sufficient to set her mind at ease. But she gave him a long steady gaze.

"I wouldn't be Head of Catastrophes if I didn't advise you to be careful.  You don't need warned about Musgrave, or Dementors, I think; but - in combination, they're both survivors and they carry forward things we all worked to destroy. Don't make the mistake of ignoring the intangible, un-measurable haunt of a dredged up war."

For Quill, people like Musgrave and creatures like Dementors were like shards of bone shrapnel embedded in the skin. The initial traumas long healed, but the splinters always working their way to the surface to appear in the most unlikely places only to have to be dug out again.

1.	1 June 2010 Witch's Coven, and 14 June 2010 Demented Documentation

             "That's fine."

Ah, but he couldn't help wondering: what if it wasn't fine? What would a woman like this do if she didn't agree? Yavin Morgenthau rose from where he'd been leaning against his desk, following her lead as she prepared to leave. He tried to imagine the lengths she might have taken. Quill Som was not like Miranda Storm. Quill Som worked on level three. Quill Som knew what it was like to live with uncomfortable and permanent realities. Quill Som was not hysterical. Quill Som would not become a problem, he decided. For now.

He gestured towards the double doors in a polite offer to walk her out. "I, aha, I never ignore the intangible." Yavin smiled dryly and tapped his forehead. "Neither Dementors nor, hm, nor the past can be destroyed after all. I will exercise caution. Your concern has been, aah, has been noted."

Two women who appeared to think the worst of Lawrence Musgrave, thus far. Powerful women. Curious. Yavin paused at the entrance, hand on the door handle. He eyed Quill thoughtfully for a moment and nodded to himself.

"Thank you for your, um, your impromptu visit," he spoke softly as he finally opened the door to reveal the dark outer chamber. "I hope we will not have further reason to, that is, to meet again, where Lawrence is concerned."